Wear less, save energy

MANILA, Philippines - Wear less this summer.

This was the advice of the Department of Energy (DOE) yesterday as a measure to keep cool during the hot summer months and to conserve electricity.

The DOE, for its part, has released a memorandum addressed to all its officials and employees to wear casual clothes or cooler attire during summer.

The DOE also informed the public that the Luzon grid has entered its critical period with the start of the one-month maintenance shutdown of the Malampaya Deep Water Gas-to-Power project in offshore Palawan. 

Malampaya, which supplies 40 percent of Luzon’s power requirements, shut down yesterday for maintenance activities until April 13, putting the grid in critical situation given higher demand during the summer.

As of yesterday, reserves were still high at 1,744 megawatts given low demand on a Sunday. Demand was at 6,385 MW while the system’s capacity was 8,129 MW, according to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).

The situation, however, could change today when everybody goes back to work. 

Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla said that for as long as there are no unplanned shutdowns of power plants, the Luzon grid is unlikely to experience outages.

“Otherwise, we will experience intermittent disturbances when plants on forced outage are down,” he said.

Whether power plants would go on unplanned outage in the coming days still remains to be seen although Petilla said the possibilities are higher this summer as more demand for power could push these aging plants to their limit.– With Jess Diaz